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A business is an organic whole where all business units have an important role to play to achieve success. For the organization to flourish, appropriate direction and control over all business units must be exercised by its Board. Effective Corporate Governance procedures must be deployed.

Traditionally, the Board has had a set of Corporate Governance responsibilities, which include:

Setting the company’s strategic goals, creating a long term strategy, taking into account present and future opportunities and threats.

Appointing and directing the management of the business to ensure their actions drive the achievement of goals in the best and most appropriate way to benefit the shareholders.

Supervising and monitoring performance, to ensure goals are met and corporate officers are properly managing the business.

The main objective is always to represent the interest of shareholders to the best of the board’s abilities.

IT governance has been traditionally defined as specifying the decision rights and accountability framework to encourage desirable behavior in the use of IT. The emphasis for IT governance has been the need for governance principles and strategic directions, as well as the necessary organizational structures, joint processes and relationship management functions. Also IT governance matters have rarely been a priority for a company’s Board.

However, times have changed quite significantly. The nature of contemporary business has made organizations heavily reliant on IT. As a consequence, effective IT Governance is having a greater impact on the overall effectiveness of Corporate Governance, and requires greater attention from the Board. That is why it never ceases to cause wonder in my mind when I think about how few people who serve, or have served, in a CIO or CTO role are represented on a company’s board of directors.